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[Part 2]

This one will be lengthy...I'm pretty passionate about these topics

Parenting

I thought I understood what it meant to be a parent.  When I had Aria, however, I learned just how WRONG I was!  There's no "right" or "wrong" way to parent...everybody does it differently...but once you're a mom, you quickly form opinions on how to (and, of course, how not to) parent.  

I believe in discipline.  Time outs don't work for everybody, and that's OK.  I believe in spanking.  I was brought up in a spanking household...and let me tell you what...nothing motivates you more to behave than the promise of your father's ginormous hand making contact on your tiny little behind.  I spank my child and I have absolutely no regrets about it.  I also believe in telling my child "no".  Kids need to hear that word often...if you give a kid everything they want all the time, they'll never learn what it means to earn something.

I believe births should be done at a hospital under the supervision of an actual doctor.  There's no safer way.  I understand a lot of people say births have been done at home for thousands of years, and that's great, but it's not for me.  I bled a LOT during childbirth...and had I not been in hospital where they could give me the proper medicine I needed to stop the bleeding, I probably would have died.  I think it's nuts to have a baby at home without an actual doctor present.

I believe in "cry it out".  The turning point in my first few months of parenting was when I left Aria in her crib crying while I went to the living crying in the middle of the night.  I woke up several hours later and everything was silent...because she had cried herself to sleep.  How can you expect to raise an independent person if you never let them learn to cope on their own?

I believe in the elimination of pacifiers and bottles.  Once baby turns one, get rid of that bottle and switch to a sippy cup.  Your kid doesn't like it?  Try a different one...but if he's thirsty enough, he'll suck it up and drink it.  And do not EVER let your child fall asleep with a bottle in their mouth...it causes bottle rot!  Your kid will have screwed up teeth the rest of his life and it will actually be all your fault...he won't need a therapist to tell him that.  There should never be a photo online of a 3/4/5/even 6 year old child with a damn bottle in her mouth (asleep).  That's disgusting...knock it off.  Same with the pacifier.  The pacifier is simply a comfort item.  They don't need it once they move past infancy.  How can your child start learning how to speak if there's always a pacifier in their mouth? If your child is starting Pre-K and you need to ask the teacher if it's OK that the child brings a paci....ugh....I can't even.

Speaking of Pre-K...I believe in daycare.  Before having Aria, I knew that after I had a baby, I would quit my job and be a stay at home mom.  But after Aria was born and we realized that my paycheck really did make a difference, it was obvious she would need to spend her days at a daycare with somebody else raising her.  I was devastated, but there was no other way. The idea of somebody else molding my child terrified the crap out of me.  But now, seeing how Aria is compared to other kids who never went to daycare or had regular playdates with other kids....I'll promote daycare all day long.  She's been learning to socialize, share, be kind, be inclusive, and all kinds of other awesome things ever since she was 12 weeks old.  She's learned more in daycare in four years than I ever would have thought to teach her.

And lastly, the idea of "crunchy moms" and "helicopter moms" baffles me.  For those who aren't yet parents "crunchy moms" are also referred to as "granola moms"...they're the ones who breast fed baby until baby could ask in a complete sentence for more milk please...they're the ones who made their own baby food and only cook organic food and spend their time at the park making sure there's nothing on the ground the child could possibly put in their mouth and get germs from (even though these ones also are the "no vaccines allowed" bunch).  "Helicopter moms" are the parents who are so over-protective of their kids, they hover over them like a helicopter.  These are the ones that will be following their child around on the play ground (actually on the equipment with the child), the ones that will still be cutting the grapes into thirds long after the kid learns how to chew, the ones who won't let their children pet the goats at the zoo because they could bite, and the ones who rush to the doctor every time baby/toddler gets a scratch to make sure it's not going to get infected and there's no underlying issues like broken limbs.  Calm down folks...let your kids be kids.  Kids are going to get dirty..they're going to eat whatever they want...they're going to get germs and get sick (newsflash:  the more germs they contract now, the more antibodies their immune system will have naturally built)...they're going to put things in their mouth they shouldn't (and probably swallow, too)...and they don't need to go to the doctor every five minutes to check out that one stray cough. 

Vaccines

This is the ONE topic that I'll get on my soap box about in conversation or on social media..I'm a firm believer in vaccines and I believe that if you don't vaccinate your child, you should be arrested for child endangerment.  Unless your child is allergic to something the vaccine is made of (I know sometimes the flu vaccine is made with eggs, so people allergic have to get the nose mist instead of the shot), there's absolutely NO REASON to not vaccinate your kids!  

"But Allysa...vaccines cause autism!!"  No, you crack pot, they don't.  First of all, one person wrote an article about it, a couple celebrity moms jumped on board (eh hem Jenny McCarthy) and then all of a sudden the whole nation was all up in arms about children getting autism because they got some vaccines.  It was later found that the person, surprise surprise, fabricated some of his data and vaccines don't in fact cause autism.  But there were so many people on the bandwagon already that this movement is still an issue today.  Read this article from the CDC about how vaccines and the ingredients in vaccines do not cause autism.

Even if they DID cause autism...would you really rather your child contract Pertussis (Whooping Cough) or Hepatitis B INSTEAD of Autism?  Come on folks...use your brains!

Because parents are choosing not to vaccinate their kids, diseases like Pertussis and Measles are starting to spread.  The CDC says this:  "Even though the United States experiences outbreaks of some vaccine-preventable diseases, the spread of disease usually slows or stops because most people are vaccinated or protected through immunity against the disease.  If we stopped vaccinating, even the few cases we have in this country could very quickly become tens or hundreds of thousands of cases."  The Centers for Disease Control want you to vaccinate your children, yet you still don't?

Here's a story:  Johnnie (a non-vaccinated child) goes with his parents to the hospital to visit a family member that just had surgery.  Unbeknownst to his parents (because they suck), Johnnie sits down on the floor by the hospital bed and starts playing with his Matchbox car he brought in to keep him busy while mom and dad socialize.  His car rolls over a dried spot of blood on the floor. Johnnie wonders what it is and then proceeds to pick at it with his fingers.  Later in the day, Johnnie eats chicken fingers for dinner...he has not washed his hands all afternoon.  Two months later at school, Johnnie and Susie, also a child who's parents did not believe in vaccines, are taking turns on the swings on the playground.  Johnnie goes first and cuts his hand on a jagged piece of metal on the chain.  When he goes to tell teacher, Susie takes her turn and gets on the swing and ends up cutting her hand on the same piece of jagged metal.  Both cuts were small enough to be covered with a band-aid, so no big deal.  A little more than a month later, Susie's parents take her to the ER in the middle of the night suspecting sudden onset of the flu because she's got a fever, can't stop throwing up, and says her bones hurt.  The doctor comes in after running some tests and tells little Susie's parents that Susie has tested positive for Hepatitis B.  One month later, another little boy at school...our old friend Johnnie...also tests positive for Hepatitis B.

That spot of blood on the hospital floor was from the patient who had been in that hospital room two day's prior...and that patient had Hepatitis B.  Hep B can live outside of the body for 7 days.  Little Johnnie, who picked at the spot of blood, got remnants of the blood under his fingernails.  Then he ate chicken fingers without washing his hand and ingested those specks of blood.  He now has antigens for Hep B floating around in his system.  It only takes 1.5-6 months for Hep B to incubate in the body.  Johnnie cut his hand on the swing, leaving a little bit of blood on the metal...a little bit of blood with Hep B in it.  Susie also cut her hand on the same piece of metal, getting some of Johnnie's blood in her own open wound.  The Hep B antigens that were in Johnnie's blood traveled through to meet Susie's blood and...voila! Two children infected with Hepatitis B simply because the parents were too ignorant to vaccinate their kids.

(Of course, we would never know little Susie had Hep B because her parents never take her to the doctor for anything, not even extreme-style vomiting, because doctors are bad and just pump their kids full of autism-causing chemicals.)

Abortion

I'm PRO-CHOICE.  While my values and my beliefs tell me that I would never get an abortion, it's not my decision to keep other people from doing it.  If Aria and her friends went to the movies one night and I'm a little late picking her up and she ends up being assaulted and raped and gets pregnant from that rape...and she wants to have an abortion...that's OK by me.  The saying "my body, my choice" goes for everything about a woman's body.  If a woman is comfortable with her decision to terminate a pregnancy, then that's HER DECISION.  It should NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER be the government's decision.

Yes, I believe that as soon as those cells start dividing and multiplying, it's alive...those cells are a person.  And yes, as stated before, I'm Christian and believe that murder is morally wrong.  But again, it's not my body...it's somebody else's body...and what they do with it is their own business.  And because I believe in exceptions...a gray area.... I feel I HAVE to be pro-choice.  I'm not ashamed of it by any means.

And, contrary to what the super-conservatives are saying, Planned Parenthood IS NOT SELLING BABY PARTS ON THE OPEN MARKET.  The portions of videos released were fabricated by an anti-abortion group who've done this before and got in trouble for it and were told not to do it again.  Not to mention, what should Planned Parenthood do with the fetuses that are aborted that the mom doesn't want?  They should sell them for research...which is exactly what they do.  Research that allows scientists and doctors to better understand the different stages of life in utero.  AND...those aborted fetuses are used for surgical students to practice on so that they can become neonatal surgeons and fix your baby's heart defect while still in the womb.  So don't knock something you don't understand.

Why don't they give them away to research instead of selling them?  Because they still need to make a profit.  I work at a non-profit blood center and I know a little about this concept.  There are some parts of the blood that we don't always use for transfusion due to a higher risk of transfusion-related illnesses.  These products are sold, at a very minimal cost, to research facilities to be further manufactured into other products, such as clotting factor injections.  There's no harm in it.  One business supports another type of business.  Planned Parenthood selling fetuses is absolutely no different.

Planned Parenthood is far more than just an "aboratory", as I saw so eloquently written in GOP propaganda.  Have you ever been to their website?  It's actually a wonderful resource for young folks...or any folks really.  Services offered include:  abortion (oh no!), birth control, emergency contraception, general health care, HIV testing, LGBTQ services, Men's healthcare, pregnancy testing and services, STD education/testing/treatment, and women's health care.

Being the mother of a girl, I'm thrilled to know that if, for some unforeseen reason, she feels unable to come to me for guidance or help, she can go to Planned Parenthood anonymously and seek help...and be given it...without feeling judged.  

If you got offended, I'm sorry..but these are MY OPINIONS and I have every right to have them.

To those of you who've openly said on Facebook "Go ahead and unfriend me right now if you're pro-choice", by all means, now that you know my views, go ahead.